With the rapid development of the Internet and the popularization of large-screen multi-function mobile terminals, a large number of mobile data multimedia services and various high bandwidth multimedia services have emerged, such as a video conferencing, television broadcasting, video on demand, advertising, online education and interactive games. This on the one hand meets the needs of mobile users for more services, and on the other hand brings a new business growth point for mobile operators. These mobile data multimedia services require that multiple users can receive the same data at the same time. Compared with common data services, the mobile data multimedia services have the characteristics of large data volume, long duration, sensitivity to delay and the like.
In order to make effective use of mobile network resources, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) proposes a Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (MBMS), which is a technology of transmitting data to multiple target mobile terminals from one data source. This technology can enable sharing of resources among networks (including core networks and access networks), and improves the utilization ratio of network resources (especially air interface resources). The MBMS service defined by the 3GPP can not only achieve multicast and broadcast of low-rate plain text message, but also can achieve broadcast and multicast of high-speed multimedia services, and thus can provide a wide range of rich video, audio and multimedia services, which undoubtedly conforms to the future trend of mobile data development and provides a better business prospect for the development of 3G.
The characteristics of the MBMS service include that the service data traffic is large, mobile terminals receive data for a long duration, and an average data rate is constant. The above characteristics determine that the scheduling of the MBMS services and configuration of control signaling are semi-static, that is, the scheduling information and the control signaling information of the MBMS services are both unchanged for a “long term”, and such information is periodically transmitted by a MBMS Control Channel (MCCH), the information being collectively referred to as MCCH information. There may be multiple MCCHs in an evolved MBMS (eMBMS) system, and each MCCH corresponds to a different multimedia Broadcasting single frequency network (MBMS Single Frequency Network, which is abbreviated as MBSFN) area, in which only control information of the MBMS service transmitted in the corresponding MBSFN area is carried.
A MBMS notification message is used to describe whether the MCCH information changes. For a user equipment (UE) in an idle mode (Radio Resource Control Idle, which is abbreviated as RRC Idle) or a UE in a connected mode (RRC Connected), only the MBMS notification message needs to be monitored to know whether the MCCH information has changed, so as to realize a selective reception of the MCCH information. That is, new MCCH information is received only when the MCCH information changes. Since an amount of information of the MBMS notification message is much smaller than that of the MCCH information, the user equipment selectively receives the MCCH information, which can effectively save resources and reduce power consumption. The MCCH notification information is carried on a Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH) of a designated MBSFN subframe and is sent periodically, and the corresponding MBSFN subframe and transmission period are indicated by a system message (for example, SIB13).
In a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, a user equipment (or a terminal, a UE for short) is informed that a session about a certain MBMS service is to be started (session start) or a counting request is initiated by a network side. Downlink Control Information (DCI for short) and a MBMS-Radio Network Temporary Identifier (M-RNTI for short) may be first sent on the PDCCH. The UE further reads a specific MCCH message according to related information in the DCI, which is called an MCCH change notification mechanism. Specific service configuration parameters, such as a service ID, a Radio Link Control (RLC), a Media Access Control (MAC), and a physical layer configuration parameter of the service, are sent on the MCCH.
Currently, the MBMS technology is introduced in the LTE system. The transmissions of the control signaling and the user data of the MBMS service are separated, which are respectively referred to as a Control Plane (CP) and a User Plane (UP). The control plane controls the sending of the user plane data by controlling the start, update and end of the service and realizes the sending of basic MBMS services. The MBMS service is sent in a fixed-size MBSFN area that may be statically or semi-statically configured. The PDCCH is indication information for parsing Physical Downlink Shared Channel (PDSCH) data. Therefore, the PDCCH is before the PDSCH (data domain) in the time domain, that is, the PDCCH occupies first 1 to 4 symbols of one subframe. The information transmitted in the PDCCH is called Downlink Control Information (DCI), which is used to indicate information such as resource configuration and uplink resource grant of the PDSCH. The CRC of the tail of the PDCCH is 16 bits, and is scrambled by using a specific Radio Network Temporary Identifier (RNTI). The RNTI is used to identify the UE or is used for specific uses. The UE performs a blind detection on the PDCCH of the received subframe. The blind detection is to search a bit sequence obtained after descrambling by the UE without priori information, and then obtain the required control signaling.
At present, a research topic of single-cell MBMS is proposed in LTE-A, in which a single-cell MBMS service is transmitted on a Physical Downlink Shared Channel (PDSCH). During the research, it was found that the Single-Cell Multicast Control Channel (SC-MCCH) is carried and sent on the PDSCH, and the Multicast Control Channel (MCCH) in the MBSFN area is carried and sent on the Physical Broadcast Channel (PMCH). The sending locations are completely different. Thus, the sending method of the MCCH is no longer suitable for the sending of SC-MCCH.
At present, no effective solution for scheduling SC-PTM services has been given in the related art.
This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.